Survey: Americans Not Optimistic for Improvement on Key Issues in 2023
Americans are not optimistic that key issues will improve over the next year, a recent survey from The Economist/YouGov found.
The survey asked respondents, “In 2023, do you think things will be better or worse than they were in 2022” when it comes to inflation — a top issue for midterm election voters.
Only 27 percent expressed confidence that inflation will improve in the next year, and of those, just five percent said it will be “much better.”
Meanwhile, 46 percent believe it will get worse, and 24 percent said it will get “much worse.” Another 16 percent said they expect no change.
The pessimistic trend is consistent with a variety of issues. For instance, just 24 percent believe the national economy will improve this year, compared to 45 percent who believe it will worsen.
Twenty percent believe the U.S. financial system will improve, compared to 42 percent who believe it will worsen. Just a quarter believe Social Security and Medicare will improve, compared to 31 percent who think it will get worse as well.
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS – OCTOBER 13: Meat products are offered for sale at a grocery store on October 13, 2022 in Chicago, Illinois. According to government data released today, the food at home index, a measure of grocery store prices, increased 0.7% in September from the month prior and saw a 13% increase over the last year. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
When asked about the state of education, 20 percent believe it will improve, while nearly one-third said it will worsen.
Confidence in health care coverage improving is also dismal, as just 22 percent believe it will improve this year. Of those, just six percent believe it will get “much better.”
Forty-three percent believe government spending will continue to worsen this year — a belief that comes on the heels of the $1.7 trillion spending spree signed by President Biden in December. Of those, 25 percent believe government spending will get “much worse” this year.
Americans also have low confidence in job security improving — 24 percent believe it will improve. Similarly, 24 percent also believe the economy in their area will improve in 2023. Even less, 23 percent, said the same of energy issues.
The survey was taken December 31 to January 3, 2022, among 1,500 U.S. adult citizens.
That same survey found 56 percent expressing the belief that the direction of the country is “off on the wrong track” and 49 percent viewing President Biden unfavorably.
WE'VE NOW REACED THE POINT WHEREBY MEXICO WILL ELECT ALL FUTURE PRESIDENTS! TAKE A GLANCE AT MEXIFORNIA, TOTALLY CONTROLLED BY LA RAZA/UNIDOus.
LAWLESS LAWYER Joe Biden and other Democrats have
spent the last four years repeating the mantra “no one is above
the law.” Yet Biden has advocated policies that would, as the San
Francisco Chronicle recently noted, effectively make the United
States a sanctuary country.
Is that not what the Democrat Party has created right here
in America, transforming a once prosperous, strong, united,
and safe nation into a debt-laden, militarily weak, socially
divided, and increasingly dangerous society? Here are some of
the Bizarro policies and beliefs inflicted on us by the neo-
socialist, globalist, anti-American Democrat Party over the past
few decades — PAUL E. SCATS
Victims wanted -- no experience necessary, apply within
When it’s not creating social injustices to overcome, the Left is busy creating victims to maintain its voter base.
In contemporary America, the Democratic Party voter base is composed primarily of individuals who perceive themselves to be disadvantaged, disenfranchised, marginalized, or in some fashion, left out. They feel, in some sense, victimized. With the actual numbers of those truly victimized declining markedly in recent decades, the party needs to perpetuate perceived victimhood to maintain its political appeal. The party excels in generating victims over a broad spectrum of societal factions through identity politics and its D-E-I agenda.
- People of color. Victims of white privilege. Any failings they may experience are due solely to an oppressive social structure based in white supremacy. They are entitled to equity-based advancement and, as now proposed in California, reparations, in return for loyalty at the ballot box.
- Women. Victims of misogyny and patriarchy, even though they now surpass males in educational achievement and the number of women in the workforce now equals or slightly exceeds the number of men. The overturning of Roe v. Wade has exacerbated their victimhood. Access to safe abortion is a human right! Women lacking access to abortion are victims. Aborted fetuses are not -- they can’t vote. “My body, my choice!“ is the mantra. One wonders what “my body, my choice” has to do with a fetus’s body? Does “my body, my choice” sanction suicide?
- The LGBTQ community. They are victims of heterosexual bigotry (although being homosexual didn’t seem to hold back Alexander the Great, Leonardo da Vinci, Tim Cook, Oscar Wilde, Elton John, etc.). Under wokeism’s exalting of gender dysphoria, 33% of students at liberal arts colleges now identify as LGBTQ. 21% of Gen Z are self-declared LGBTQ. The incidence of those who identify as something other than hetero has risen from 3.5% in 2012 to 7.1% in the general public. Not all this sharp escalation can be reasonably attributed to an increased comfort with “coming out,” but is more certainly a consequence of woke activism.
- Our youth. Herein lies the greatest source of potential victims. First, strip them of societal connectivity. Debase America, patriotism, religion, family structure, gender identity, even commitment to a first name. Turn them all into “Rolling Stones” -- “on their own, with no direction home, like a complete unknown.” Make them insecure and vulnerable. Then coddle and indulge them. Teach them that the slightest affronts are catastrophes. Teach them to flee from microaggressions to safe spaces. Suspend classes and postpone finals following Trump’s election. Create a generation of victimized snowflakes who can turn only to a nurturing political elite for protection. It’s working. Joe Biden garnered 65% of Gen Z votes.
- Illegal immigrants. They are all asylum-seeking victims of political prosecution and/or human rights violations in their native lands. No. They are all potential Democratic voters, at least this generation.
- Criminals. Victims of the social system. Incarceration only leads to recidivism -- and inmates can’t vote. Prosecutorial leniency is the better option.
- Whites. Mainstream whites are not victims. However, woke preaching teaches them that their success is unearned and inequitable, a product of white privilege and unconscious bias. This results in a cadre of guilt-ridden, virtue-signaling whites -- today’s liberals -- who repent by supporting the woke progressive agenda. Marginalized white residents of rural areas such as Appalachia also do not qualify for victimhood. Possessed of white privilege, it is only through their own failings that they are underachievers. They have to be written off as irredeemable MAGA voters.
In 21st-century America, victimhood is largely a state of mind. If Prince Harry and Meghan can be victims, anyone can! All the party need do to lock in its base is keep the glass half empty for those inclined to be dissatisfied or dissident on the one hand, while offering them "hope and change" with the other. That leaves it free to pursue any inane policy it chooses. Zero CO2 emissions by 2050, anyone?
Image: Pexels
"In 2016, according to my analysis of the data, more Americans were
reported killed by homicide in Mexico than the combined total of Americans killed by homicide in every other country abroad." MONICA SHOWALTER
"The newly elected president, Andrés López-Obrador, was gleeful during the election when he told his compadres they should all move to America, illegally. His encouragement along with his pro-poverty policies will set the stage for another tsunami of illegal immigration." COLIN FLAHERTY
"They will destroy America from within. The leftist billionaires who orchestrate these plans are wealthy. Those tasked with representing us in Congress will never be exposed to the cost of the invasion. They have nothing but contempt for us who must endure the consequences of our communities being intruded upon by gangs, drug dealers and human traffickers. These people have no intention of becoming Americans; like the Democrats who welcome them, they have contempt for us." PATRICIA McCARTHY
The immigration debate has been raging for years. Advocates for open borders can be found on both sides of the political aisle and in a wide variety of special interest groups who have come to see the immigration system that delivers an unlimited supply of cheap and exploitable labor, an unlimited supply of foreign tourists, and unlimited supply of foreign students and, for the lawyers, an unlimited supply of clients. MICHAEL CUTLER
“Make no mistake about it: the Latino community holds this election in your hands. Some of the closest contests this November will be in states like Florida, Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico -- states with large Latino populations.” PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE BARACK OBAMA
“I know how powerful this community is. Just think how powerful you could be on November 4th if you translate your numbers into votes.” PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE BARACK OBAMA
8. "The Race" bitterly protested common-sense voter ID provisions as an "absolute disgrace."
FIFTEEN THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT LA RAZA “THE RACE”
by Michelle Malkin
Only in America could critics of a group called "The Race" be labeled racists. Such is the triumph of left-wing identity chauvinists, whose aggressive activists and supine abettors have succeeded in redefining all opposition as "hate."
Both Barack Obama and John McCain will speak this week in San Diego at the annual conference of the National Council of La Raza, the Latino organization whose name is Spanish for, yes, "The Race." Can you imagine Obama and McCain paying homage to a group of white people who called themselves that? No matter. The presidential candidates and the media have legitimized "The Race" as a mainstream ethnic lobbying group and marginalized its critics as intolerant bigots. The unvarnished truth is that the group is a radical ethnic nationalist outfit that abuses your tax dollars and milks PC politics to undermine our sovereignty.
Here are 15 things you should know about "The Race":
15. "The Race" supports driver's licenses for illegal aliens.
14."The Race" demands in-state tuition discounts for illegal alien students that are not available to law-abiding U.S. citizens and law-abiding legal immigrants.
13. "The Race" vehemently opposes cooperative immigration enforcement efforts between local, state and federal authorities.
12. "The Race" opposes a secure fence on the southern border.
11. "The Race" joined the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in a failed lawsuit attempt to prevent the feds from entering immigration information into a key national crime database -- and to prevent local police officers from accessing the data.
10. "The Race" opposed the state of Oklahoma's tough immigration-enforcement-first laws, which cut off welfare to illegal aliens, put teeth in employer sanctions and strengthened local-federal cooperation and information sharing.
9. "The Race" joined other open-borders, anti-assimilationists and sued to prevent Proposition 227, California's bilingual education reform ballot initiative, from becoming law.
8. "The Race" bitterly protested common-sense voter ID provisions as an "absolute disgrace."
7. "The Race" has consistently opposed post-9/11 national security measures at every turn.
6. Former "Race" president Raul Yzaguirre, Hillary Clinton's Hispanic outreach adviser, said this: "U.S. English is to Hispanics as the Ku Klux Klan is to blacks." He was referring to U.S. English, the nation's oldest, largest citizens' action group dedicated to preserving the unifying role of the English language in the United States. "The Race" also pioneered Orwellian open-borders Newspeak and advised the Mexican government on how to lobby for illegal alien amnesty while avoiding the terms "illegal" and "amnesty."
5. "The Race" gives mainstream cover to a poisonous subset of ideological satellites, led by Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, or Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan (MEChA). The late GOP Rep. Charlie Norwood rightly characterized the organization as "a radical racist group … one of the most anti-American groups in the country, which has permeated U.S. campuses since the 1960s, and continues its push to carve a racist nation out of the American West."
4. "The Race" is currently leading a smear campaign against staunch immigration enforcement leaders and has called for TV and cable news networks to keep immigration enforcement proponents off the airwaves -- in addition to pushing for Fairness Doctrine policies to shut up their foes. The New York Times reported that current "Race" president Janet Murguia believes "hate speech" should "not be tolerated, even if such censorship were a violation of First Amendment rights."
3. "The Race" sponsors militant ethnic nationalist charter schools subsidized by your public tax dollars (at least $8 million in federal education grants). The schools include Aztlan Academy in Tucson, Ariz., the Mexicayotl Academy in Nogales, Ariz., Academia Cesar Chavez Charter School in St. Paul, Minn., and La Academia Semillas del Pueblo in Los Angeles, whose principal inveighed: "We don't want to drink from a White water fountain, we have our own wells and our natural reservoirs and our way of collecting rain in our aqueducts. We don't need a White water fountain … ultimately the White way, the American way, the neo liberal, capitalist way of life will eventually lead to our own destruction."
2. "The Race" has perfected the art of the PC shakedown at taxpayer expense, pushing relentlessly to lower home loan standards for Hispanic borrowers, reaping millions in federal "mortgage counseling" grants, seeking special multimillion-dollar earmarks and partnering with banks that do business with illegal aliens.
1. "The Race" thrives on ethnic supremacy -- and the elite sheeple's unwillingness to call it what it is. As historian Victor Davis Hanson observes: "[The] organization's very nomenclature 'The National Council of La Raza' is hate speech to the core. Despite all the contortions of the group, Raza (as its Latin cognate suggests) reflects the meaning of 'race' in Spanish, not 'the people' -- and that's precisely why we don't hear of something like 'The National Council of the People,' which would not confer the buzz notion of ethnic, racial and tribal chauvinism."
The fringe is the center. The center is the fringe. Viva La Raza.LA RAZA: The Mexican Fascist Party of LA RAZA “THE RACE” and the Reconquista and surrender of America to NARCOMEX
Michelle Malkin: Open Borders =
Election Sabotage
"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to wreck America's election integrity."
Yes, my friends, it's time to change the (in)famous phrase at the base of the Statue of Liberty. Open borders are not just a recipe for replacing native-born workers with cheap foreign labor and trading assimilation for multicultural militancy. They're about undermining the historic nation through devalued citizenship and sabotage of the precious right to vote.
Over the weekend, New York City's Democrat mayor Eric Adams threw his support to a City Council-approved measure to allow an estimated 800,000 local noncitizens to participate in local elections. The newly minted voters would include green-card holders, temporary visa holders, including H-1B workers mostly from China and India, F-1/Optional Practical Training foreign university students with employment authorization, and potentially unknown masses of illegal alien so-called Dreamers.
These new voters will be granted enormous influence over vital local matters pertaining to everything from education to taxes to crime and only need to show they've been in the city for a measly 30 days. It doesn't matter that these noncitizens will largely have no attachment at all to America as their permanent home but instead see it as a temporary rest stop, a cash cow, or, at worst, hostile territory.
Adams proclaimed in a statement that while he had "some concerns" about the bill, he now believes "allowing the legislation to be enacted is by far the best choice, and look forward to bringing millions more into the democratic process."
"Democratic process," of course, is a euphemism for "Democrat Party."
The demographic overwhelming of our elections through both illegal alien amnesty and unfettered legal immigration is straight out of the left-wing playbook. What's happening in the Big Apple is not new, nor is it a "conspiracy theory." As I've long reported since my early days in newspaper journalism in Southern California, there's been a steady erosion of voter integrity at the hands of open-borders politicians and operatives for decades.
Since 1991, six municipalities in Montgomery County, Md. have allowed noncitizens (with no distinction between legal and illegal aliens) to cast ballots in local elections: Garrett Park, Takoma Park, Somerset, Chevy Chase, Martin's Additions, and Barnesville. An additional five Maryland municipalities, two Vermont towns, two U.S. territories, and San Francisco (school board elections only, for now) have also opened their voting booths to noncitizens.
And don't forget: In 1993, the federal "Motor Voter" law "expanded the franchise" for political expediency — exacerbating the perilous trend of lowering the safeguards for voting that continues to undermine the value of U.S. citizenship today. The nationwide granting of driver's licenses to illegal aliens paved the way for untold election theft.
Former Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner Alan C. Nelson's warning nearly 30 years ago when Takoma Park passed its noncitizen voting referendum remains more trenchant than ever:
"In many countries of the world, an alien is always an alien. In our country, we are proud that our laws and social policies encourage aliens of all races and cultures to become citizens. In recent years, however, an increasing number of aliens have not pursued citizenship....This trend is disturbing, because it could seriously affect the assimilation process immigrants have pursued in this nation for 200 years....This important value of becoming a citizen is lost if an alien can vote without becoming a citizen. Any legal resident alien can become a U.S. citizen in five years. That is not an unreasonable time to wait to be able to participate in our democracy....The five-year wait emphasizes the value of citizenship as a requirement to vote and to becoming a full member of the community....If local voting by noncitizens is allowed, state and federal voting could be next. Either there is a policy basis for noncitizens to vote, or there is not. If we open the door, it cannot be closed halfway."
It should be as glaring as Lady Liberty's torchlight that election reform begins with a complete, total, and immediate immigration moratorium.
Michelle Malkin is a conservative blogger at michellemalkin.com, syndicated columnist, author, and founder of hotair.com. Michelle Malkin's email address is MichelleMalkinInvestigates@protonmail.com.
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
Mexico prefers to export its poor, not uplift them
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0330/p09s02-coop.html
Mexico prefers to export its poor, not uplift them
By George W. Grayson
WILLIAMSBURG, VA. — At the parleys this week with his US and Canadian counterparts in Cancún, Mexican President Vicente Fox will press for more opportunities for his countrymen north of the Rio Grande. Specifically, he will argue for additional visas for Mexicans to enter the United States and Canada, the expansion of guest-worker schemes, and the "regularization" of illegal immigrants who reside throughout the continent. In a recent interview with CNN, the Mexican chief executive excoriated as "undemocratic" the extension of a wall on the US-Mexico border and called for the "orderly, safe, and legal" northbound flow of Mexicans, many of whom come from his home state of Guanajuato.
Mexican legislators share Mr. Fox's goals. Silvia Hernández Enriquez, head of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations for North America, recently emphasized that the solution to the "structural phenomenon" of unlawful migration lies not with "walls or militarization" but with "understanding, cooperation, and joint responsibility."
Such rhetoric would be more convincing if Mexican officials were making a good faith effort to uplift the 50 percent of their 106 million people who live in poverty. To his credit, Fox's "Opportunities" initiative has improved slightly the plight of the poorest of the poor. Still, neither he nor Mexico's lawmakers have advanced measures that would spur sustained growth, improve the quality of the workforce, curb unemployment, and obviate the flight of Mexicans abroad.
Indeed, Mexico's leaders have turned hypocrisy from an art form into an exact science as they shirk their obligations to fellow citizens, while decrying efforts by the US senators and representatives to crack down on illegal immigration at the border and the workplace.
What are some examples of this failure of responsibility?
• When oil revenues are excluded, Mexico raises the equivalent of only 9 percent of its gross domestic product in taxes - a figure roughly equivalent to that of Haiti and far below the level of major Latin American nations. Not only is Mexico's collection rate ridiculously low, its fiscal regime is riddled with loopholes and exemptions, giving rise to widespread evasion. Congress has rebuffed efforts to reform the system.
• Insufficient revenues mean that Mexico spends relatively little on two key elements of social mobility: Education commands just 5.3 percent of its GDP and healthcare only 6.10 percent, according to the World Bank's last comparative study.
• A venal, "come-back-tomorrow" bureaucracy explains the 58 days it takes to open a business in Mexico compared with three days in Canada, five days in the US, nine days in Jamaica, and 27 days in Chile. Mexico's private sector estimates that 34 percent of the firms in the country made "extra official" payments to functionaries and legislators in 2004. These bribes totaled $11.2 billion and equaled 12 percent of GDP.
• Transparency International, a nongovernmental organization, placed Mexico in a tie with Ghana, Panama, Peru, and Turkey for 65th among 158 countries surveyed for corruption.
• Economic competition is constrained by the presence of inefficient, overstaffed state oil and electricity monopolies, as well as a small number of private corporations - closely linked to government big shots - that control telecommunications, television, food processing, transportation, construction, and cement. Politicians who talk about, much less propose, trust-busting measures are as rare as a snowfall in the Sonoran Desert.
Geography, self-interests, and humanitarian concerns require North America's neighbors to cooperate on myriad issues, not the least of which is immigration. However, Mexico's power brokers have failed to make the difficult decisions necessary to use their nation's bountiful wealth to benefit the masses. Washington and Ottawa have every right to insist that Mexico's pampered elite act responsibly, rather than expecting US and Canadian taxpayers to shoulder burdens Mexico should assume.
• George W. Grayson, who teaches government at the College of William & Mary, is the author of "Mesías Mexicano," forthcoming, a book about Mexican presidential front-runner Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
Mexican President Celebrates ’40 Million’ Mexicans in the U.S.
Mexico’s President Andrés Lopez Obrador says 40 million Mexicans are living in the United States.
“Just imagine: There are 40 million Mexicans in the United States — 40 million [including people] who were born here in Mexico, [or] who are the children of people who were born in Mexico,” President Andrés Lopez Obrador gushed at a January 10 press conference with President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Obrador’s proud Mexican-first advocacy for ethnic Mexicans — including ethnic Mexicans in the United States — is very different from the globalist, investor-first policies pushed by Trudeau and Biden.
At the Tuesday summit, Biden pushed the globalist, pro-migration “Nation of Immigrants” narrative as he described all Americans — including the descendants of Americans — as mere immigrants.
“Look, all of you know all of us in the United States are immigrants,” Biden said. “Mine go all the way back to the Irish famine,” Biden told the press conference.
Biden’s use of “immigrant” demotes the status of American citizens to that of illegal migrants, because the same “immigrant” term is normally used by establishment outlets to promote illegal migrants.
Biden also called for the use of global labor to fill jobs in the U.S. economy, regardless of many sidelined Americans, and regardless of the economic impact on ordinary Americans’ wages and rents:
We cannot wall ourself off from shared problems. We are stronger and better when we work together … At the top of our shared agenda today is keeping North America the most competitive, prosperous, and resilient economic region of the world … [and creating] pathways for immigrants from Nicaragua, Cuba, and Haiti that were seeking a better life here in the United States of America.
Biden recently announced a plan to allow 360,000 people from four countries to move to the United States each year. That huge population transfer from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, and Venezuela is in addition to the global inflow of illegal migrants, and Congress’s normal inflow of roughly one million legal immigrants.
In contrast, the Mexican president repeatedly boasted about how his government policies are making life better for Mexicans, and are reducing the incentives for Mexicans to migrate to the United States:
The [goverenment] budget is used for development and supporting the poorest sectors of our population, today we not only have jobs, employment, we have seen reductions in violence. We have less migration as well. And we’ve also tempered frustration. And what we can see is this flame — this flame which is alive. I’m talking about the flame of hope.
Obrador’s pro-Mexican policies include his demand that Congress give the huge prize of amnesty to Mexico’s illegal migrants in the United States:
I fully trust President Biden … I’ve asked President Biden to insist before the U.S. Congress to regularize the migration situations of millions of Mexicans who have been in the States working, living in the United States, and contributing to the development of that great nation, which is the United States of America.
As an ethnic Mexican nationalist, Obrador opposes Mexican emigration — but he also supports more ethnic Latino migration into the United States:
We do celebrate the fact that the U.S. administration has … made the decision, rather, to have an orderly migration flow in the case, for instance, of our Venezuelan brothers and sisters … Just as I was telling you that in the case of migration, first there were brothers and sisters from Central America and also from Mexico, but now, in recent times, a lot of migrants from Venezuela, from Nicaragua, Colombia, Ecuador.
Obrador also applauded Trudeau’s decision to import 25,000 Mexican temporary workers for Canadian jobs, such as helping to house and feed Trudeau’s huge wave of global migrants who have been invited into Canada. “This program is already benefiting 25,000 men and women — 25,000 Mexicans,” said Obrador.
“Prime Minister Trudeau is a great ally of Mexico,” he added.
Obrador downplayed the benefits gained by Mexico when U.S. investors moved many manufacturing jobs to Mexico, as he claimed that his pro-Mexican policies are reducing Mexican emigration:
There are less migrants abandoning Mexico now because there’s public investment; because out of 35 million families, 30 million families of Mexican families are now receiving at least a program — a wellbeing program …All the senior citizens, 65 or over, receive a pension … Eleven million students of low-income families, of poor families are getting grants [and] cholarships …. We are planting over 1 million hectares of fruit and timber trees. And we are giving jobs to over 400,000 peasants that are growing, planting those trees … So, then, all these programs help so that people may be staying in their own communities, in their towns.
The U.S. government has long operated a globalist economic policy of “Extraction Migration.” The policy extracts vast amounts of human resources from needy countries, disguised under the Cold War-era “Nation of Immigrants” narrative and deliberately ineffective border security.
The extracted workers, renters, and consumers are used to grow Wall Street and to expand the low-wage service sector in the economy.
This colonization-like policy has killed many thousands of unrecognized migrants, including many on the taxpayer-funded trail through the Darien Gap in Panama.
The migrant inflow has successfully forced down Americans’ wages and boosted rents and housing prices. The inflow has also pushed many native-born Americans out of careers in a wide variety of business sectors, and reduced native-born Americans’ clout in local and national elections, and contributed to the rising death rate of poor Americans.
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